Dave Gauer @ratfactor explains why he reads technical books. He expresses very well motivations I share but couldn't articulate, such as books having a single voice and stylistic convention.
Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland - 7/10
Honestly, I hadn't heard anything about this book. I just saw it was an Ancient British fantasy and jumped right in.
An unexpected bonus was my uncanny ability to find sapphic books without realising 👀
I would definitely recommend this to anyone loosely interested in Celtic history or religion. If you're not, it's just a damn good stand alone fantasy (but you might struggle with some of the character names).
priryo@linernotes.club
boosted
The terms “artificial intelligence” (AI) and “generative artificial intelligence” (Gen AI) are often conflated, but mean different things. In fact, the latter is a subset of the former.
A lot of what is (or once was) considered “AI” falls into the category of “symbolic AI” and is often overlooked. The boundary seems to shift over time as these algorithms go from being revolutionary to commonplace.
This post by Jeff Winter summarizes the ML side of things very well, but it doesn’t really dive into symbolic AI. Still, it’s a worthwhile read for anyone who wants a better understanding of where Gen AI fits in the broader context of AI overall.
https://www.jeffwinterinsights.com/insights/chatgpt-venn-diagram
Woozle Hypertwin
boosted
#Reading in Week Thirty-Four of 2025 | August 18–24 | tag to mute: #BokBooks | ~1700 words | ~9800 characters |
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●●○○○ Jerk the Giant Killer {Lefty Feep 7} - Robert Bloch (ss) 1942
Lefty tells a tale of his friend – naturally called Jack – who, while hiding out in Pennsylvania from the Mob, played at farming, and planted some seeds that grew into a beanstalk. Jack retrieved the chicken (not goose in this case), and hid it in his hen house when he got back.
His wife, assuming he stole it from the neighbors, cooked it so it wouldn't be recognized. The self-playing harp suffered a similar fate when he had to smash it to make an impromptu wire-saw to cut down the beanstalk when the giant was after him on his second trip down.
All in all, a lightly-changed version of the fairy tale, existing for Lefty's colorful use of language and odd puns.
●●●●◐ Head On {Lock In 2} - John Scalzi (nov) 2018
"Hadens" are people suffering "lock in" as a result of a rare side-effect of a flu-like disease that swept the world. Four and a half million Americans became Hadens in the initial pandemic, and thirty thousand more become Hadens each year. They participate in society by tele-operating robotic "threeps" using surgically-embedded neural networks.
There's also a Haden-only sport, an ultra-violent game where one team of eleven tries to tear the head off a randomly chosen member of the opposing team, and make a goal with it. The game involves swords, crossbows, and specially-built threeps. And for the first time ever, a player – whose physical body was in a different city – dies in the course of a game, when his head is torn off for the third time.
This book has a detective duo, one of them a Haden himself, investigate the event. It leads to murders, a suicide, revelations of money laundering and betrayal, sketchy drugs, international criminals organizations, more.
Also an oversized sport robot crashing into the building junior Agent Shane shares with five other Hadens, doing much damage while searching for a cat he picked up at the scene of a building fire set to cover up an earlier crime.
●●◐○○ Last Cruise of the Judas Iscariot - Edward Page Mitchell (ss) 1882
Ships can have personalities, the same as people and animals, though some don't believe that. Captain Cram didn't, when he bought the Flying Sprite from its previous owner. After a few trips, when the ship went aground, or had vital parts break, or even rammed another vessel, Cram renamed the ship Judas Iscariot. This is a tale of the ship, the ills she visited on her owners, and how she wouldn't even sink where they wanted when they tried to scuttle her.
●●●○○ Unnatural - Ann Christy (ss) 2015
In our timeline, Pope John Paul I was pontiff for 33 days in 1978, at the same time the world's fist test-tube baby was born. In this timeline, he lived for decades more, and his first proclamation was that in-vitro fertilization was fine, that encouraging births through technical means was in line with Catholic doctrine.
The first part of this story is about the Pope thinking about his proclamation. The second part takes place 200 years later, when all births are via birthing pods, and a woman who illegally arranged to become pregnant the old-fashioned way was forced to flee her homeland with her husband when her own mother tried to turn her in.
●●●○ The Empathetic Life of Rebecca Wright {Middle Falls 10} - Shawn Inmon (nov) 2019
Rebecca Wright was brought up by an unfeeling mother and a mostly-absent father (he was in the Navy), end never managed to make a real emotional connection with anyone but her little brother. She married a dentist, who ended up divorcing her for his hygienist, and raised her son alone, badly. She died poor and alone.
But in Middle Falls, you get a second chance. If necessary, third, tenth, and fiftieth chances, until you fix your life. On her next twenty or so lives, Rebecca dropped back into her life when her husband was telling her he was leaving her. She knew what was going to happen, so she let him have custody of her son, took the money from the house and practice, and toured the world with her brother. When she got bored, she left her money it to her brother and killed herself to start the next loop.
Over time, she slowly changed, until she managed a life where she helped her gay brother fight AIDS (she knew what companies to invest in, so she was rich), she raised her son decently, and befriended her son's nanny and her out-of-wedlock daughter. Eventually she achieved true empathy, and finally moved on.
●●●●○ These Are the Times - Jack Campbell (ss) 2007
On a mission to further document the much-studied events of the Shot Hear 'Round the World of April 1775 near Boston, Time Interventionist Mike once more meets Pam, a TI from a century in his future, whom he last encountered in WWII London, and with whom he fell in love. Pam's here to find out exactly who fired that first shot.
This is a very well observed bit of spacetime, with agents from a hundred different futures trying to document things, or change them, or change them back. When William Dawes is making his historic ride, Mike witnesses scores of stealth-suited TIs along the roadway try to stop him, or prevent others from doing so.
Mike also finds a private agent intent on stopping the Colonies from breaking free by any means, and that agent ends up threatening Pam, whom Mike awkwardly saves, coincidentally answering Pam's mission's question for her.
●●●●◐ Murder by Memory - Olivia Waite (nvt) 2025 #LGBT
A NAFAL ship making a thousand-year journey to found a new colony wants its original colonists to be alive at the end. They do this by recording their minds in glass 'books' and playing them into new young bodies that they print off whenever they die.
This story is about a bank teller who figured out how to illegally make lots of money in the two-day gap that occurs when a new body is being prepared, and the detective whom the Shipmind copied to someone else's body to solve the murder. Plus: every significant speaking character in this story was queer. Minus: the story depended on a sequence of "why would they do it this way" matters on the ship.
For example, the 10,000 passengers each are backed up in a single book apiece, in a single place, despite every computer expert saying you should have at least two backups in widely separated locations. More, the story only worked because a tech character arranged to ignore regulations and make sure that his aunt (and other detectives, to make it look less selfish) was backed up twice.
Still, I liked the tone of the piece, even if some of the plot details don't much bear logical contemplation.
●●●◐○ Born in the Wrong Body - Martin Brant (nva) 2020 #trans
Michelle has been on hormone therapy for a year, and gets a transfer from the Midwest to California, to begin living openly as a woman in a new setting. She also plans to undergo gender affirmation surgery, seeing that as her only path forward, since she expects that's what any man she falls for will want.
Before that comes to pass, Michelle makes a new friend, who happens to be a nudist along with her boyfriend. They help her become more comfortable with her current body.
She also meets a man who likes her and enjoys spending time with her. When they go farther, it turns out that Brad will support whatever decision she makes, but he's fine with his girlfriend – and hopefully future wife – having a penis. They go to a nudist beach with their friends, enjoy themselves, and get their Happily Ever After.
●●●◐○ The Sun Never Sets - Anthea Sharp (ss) 2015
An upper class Victorian young woman with an interest in astronomy discovers a comet. She conveys the info to a Viscount who belongs to the Astronomical Society at the ball her mother is hosting to find her a suitor, and later finds he stole credit.
But that becomes a minor concern when observations show that the brightly-shining not-a-comet is headed toward Earth. It ends up being a spaceship, a shuttle of which lands at Buckingham Palace while Kate is being presented to the Queen…
●●○○○ The Case of the Timothy File {Miles Grant 4} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2017
Private Investigator Miles Grant arrives at his Seattle office from his suburban Bremerton home to find a request to call a local doctor. The pediatrician is being blackmailed with a nude photo of his four-year-old son sitting on a sofa. No parents of young children will want their kids associated with a seedy doctor, so he needs to find out who the blackmailer is.
In the course of his investigation, Grant discovers the Doctor has lied to him multiple times and is involved in a nefarious business. Despite the obstacles the Doctor has put in his way, Grant solves the case and turns the tables on the Doctor.
This book has similar structural flaws to the last one, primarily "why would a criminal hire a detective?" Add in the nature of the criminality, and it rates even lower.
●●○○○ Sunspot - Hal Clement (ss) 1960
A number of scientists and technicians have embedded their spaceship into a comet, which they have maneuvered into a parabolic orbit that will get very close to the sun. The surface of the comet is studded with instruments. But of course things go wrong, and there are feats of engineering derring-do when people have to go out and fix those instruments under the unimaginable glare of the sun near perihelion.
Clements stories are always demonstrations of physics or chemistry, with a light covering of plot and character. One must read them as of-their-time, and not wonder why robot craft weren't sent. But given that, they're okay.
━━━━━━━━━━
Cumulative 2025 totals as of Week Thirty-Four:
204 ss | 25 nvt | 05 nva | 83 nov | #books
━━━━━━━━━━
Gym Jordan is full of shit, as usual.
#Reading in Week Thirty-Four of 2025 | August 18–24 | tag to mute: #BokBooks | ~1700 words | ~9800 characters |
━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━
●●○○○ Jerk the Giant Killer {Lefty Feep 7} - Robert Bloch (ss) 1942
Lefty tells a tale of his friend – naturally called Jack – who, while hiding out in Pennsylvania from the Mob, played at farming, and planted some seeds that grew into a beanstalk. Jack retrieved the chicken (not goose in this case), and hid it in his hen house when he got back.
His wife, assuming he stole it from the neighbors, cooked it so it wouldn't be recognized. The self-playing harp suffered a similar fate when he had to smash it to make an impromptu wire-saw to cut down the beanstalk when the giant was after him on his second trip down.
All in all, a lightly-changed version of the fairy tale, existing for Lefty's colorful use of language and odd puns.
●●●●◐ Head On {Lock In 2} - John Scalzi (nov) 2018
"Hadens" are people suffering "lock in" as a result of a rare side-effect of a flu-like disease that swept the world. Four and a half million Americans became Hadens in the initial pandemic, and thirty thousand more become Hadens each year. They participate in society by tele-operating robotic "threeps" using surgically-embedded neural networks.
There's also a Haden-only sport, an ultra-violent game where one team of eleven tries to tear the head off a randomly chosen member of the opposing team, and make a goal with it. The game involves swords, crossbows, and specially-built threeps. And for the first time ever, a player – whose physical body was in a different city – dies in the course of a game, when his head is torn off for the third time.
This book has a detective duo, one of them a Haden himself, investigate the event. It leads to murders, a suicide, revelations of money laundering and betrayal, sketchy drugs, international criminals organizations, more.
Also an oversized sport robot crashing into the building junior Agent Shane shares with five other Hadens, doing much damage while searching for a cat he picked up at the scene of a building fire set to cover up an earlier crime.
●●◐○○ Last Cruise of the Judas Iscariot - Edward Page Mitchell (ss) 1882
Ships can have personalities, the same as people and animals, though some don't believe that. Captain Cram didn't, when he bought the Flying Sprite from its previous owner. After a few trips, when the ship went aground, or had vital parts break, or even rammed another vessel, Cram renamed the ship Judas Iscariot. This is a tale of the ship, the ills she visited on her owners, and how she wouldn't even sink where they wanted when they tried to scuttle her.
●●●○○ Unnatural - Ann Christy (ss) 2015
In our timeline, Pope John Paul I was pontiff for 33 days in 1978, at the same time the world's fist test-tube baby was born. In this timeline, he lived for decades more, and his first proclamation was that in-vitro fertilization was fine, that encouraging births through technical means was in line with Catholic doctrine.
The first part of this story is about the Pope thinking about his proclamation. The second part takes place 200 years later, when all births are via birthing pods, and a woman who illegally arranged to become pregnant the old-fashioned way was forced to flee her homeland with her husband when her own mother tried to turn her in.
●●●○ The Empathetic Life of Rebecca Wright {Middle Falls 10} - Shawn Inmon (nov) 2019
Rebecca Wright was brought up by an unfeeling mother and a mostly-absent father (he was in the Navy), end never managed to make a real emotional connection with anyone but her little brother. She married a dentist, who ended up divorcing her for his hygienist, and raised her son alone, badly. She died poor and alone.
But in Middle Falls, you get a second chance. If necessary, third, tenth, and fiftieth chances, until you fix your life. On her next twenty or so lives, Rebecca dropped back into her life when her husband was telling her he was leaving her. She knew what was going to happen, so she let him have custody of her son, took the money from the house and practice, and toured the world with her brother. When she got bored, she left her money it to her brother and killed herself to start the next loop.
Over time, she slowly changed, until she managed a life where she helped her gay brother fight AIDS (she knew what companies to invest in, so she was rich), she raised her son decently, and befriended her son's nanny and her out-of-wedlock daughter. Eventually she achieved true empathy, and finally moved on.
●●●●○ These Are the Times - Jack Campbell (ss) 2007
On a mission to further document the much-studied events of the Shot Hear 'Round the World of April 1775 near Boston, Time Interventionist Mike once more meets Pam, a TI from a century in his future, whom he last encountered in WWII London, and with whom he fell in love. Pam's here to find out exactly who fired that first shot.
This is a very well observed bit of spacetime, with agents from a hundred different futures trying to document things, or change them, or change them back. When William Dawes is making his historic ride, Mike witnesses scores of stealth-suited TIs along the roadway try to stop him, or prevent others from doing so.
Mike also finds a private agent intent on stopping the Colonies from breaking free by any means, and that agent ends up threatening Pam, whom Mike awkwardly saves, coincidentally answering Pam's mission's question for her.
●●●●◐ Murder by Memory - Olivia Waite (nvt) 2025 #LGBT
A NAFAL ship making a thousand-year journey to found a new colony wants its original colonists to be alive at the end. They do this by recording their minds in glass 'books' and playing them into new young bodies that they print off whenever they die.
This story is about a bank teller who figured out how to illegally make lots of money in the two-day gap that occurs when a new body is being prepared, and the detective whom the Shipmind copied to someone else's body to solve the murder. Plus: every significant speaking character in this story was queer. Minus: the story depended on a sequence of "why would they do it this way" matters on the ship.
For example, the 10,000 passengers each are backed up in a single book apiece, in a single place, despite every computer expert saying you should have at least two backups in widely separated locations. More, the story only worked because a tech character arranged to ignore regulations and make sure that his aunt (and other detectives, to make it look less selfish) was backed up twice.
Still, I liked the tone of the piece, even if some of the plot details don't much bear logical contemplation.
●●●◐○ Born in the Wrong Body - Martin Brant (nva) 2020 #trans
Michelle has been on hormone therapy for a year, and gets a transfer from the Midwest to California, to begin living openly as a woman in a new setting. She also plans to undergo gender affirmation surgery, seeing that as her only path forward, since she expects that's what any man she falls for will want.
Before that comes to pass, Michelle makes a new friend, who happens to be a nudist along with her boyfriend. They help her become more comfortable with her current body.
She also meets a man who likes her and enjoys spending time with her. When they go farther, it turns out that Brad will support whatever decision she makes, but he's fine with his girlfriend – and hopefully future wife – having a penis. They go to a nudist beach with their friends, enjoy themselves, and get their Happily Ever After.
●●●◐○ The Sun Never Sets - Anthea Sharp (ss) 2015
An upper class Victorian young woman with an interest in astronomy discovers a comet. She conveys the info to a Viscount who belongs to the Astronomical Society at the ball her mother is hosting to find her a suitor, and later finds he stole credit.
But that becomes a minor concern when observations show that the brightly-shining not-a-comet is headed toward Earth. It ends up being a spaceship, a shuttle of which lands at Buckingham Palace while Kate is being presented to the Queen…
●●○○○ The Case of the Timothy File {Miles Grant 4} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2017
Private Investigator Miles Grant arrives at his Seattle office from his suburban Bremerton home to find a request to call a local doctor. The pediatrician is being blackmailed with a nude photo of his four-year-old son sitting on a sofa. No parents of young children will want their kids associated with a seedy doctor, so he needs to find out who the blackmailer is.
In the course of his investigation, Grant discovers the Doctor has lied to him multiple times and is involved in a nefarious business. Despite the obstacles the Doctor has put in his way, Grant solves the case and turns the tables on the Doctor.
This book has similar structural flaws to the last one, primarily "why would a criminal hire a detective?" Add in the nature of the criminality, and it rates even lower.
●●○○○ Sunspot - Hal Clement (ss) 1960
A number of scientists and technicians have embedded their spaceship into a comet, which they have maneuvered into a parabolic orbit that will get very close to the sun. The surface of the comet is studded with instruments. But of course things go wrong, and there are feats of engineering derring-do when people have to go out and fix those instruments under the unimaginable glare of the sun near perihelion.
Clements stories are always demonstrations of physics or chemistry, with a light covering of plot and character. One must read them as of-their-time, and not wonder why robot craft weren't sent. But given that, they're okay.
━━━━━━━━━━
Cumulative 2025 totals as of Week Thirty-Four:
204 ss | 25 nvt | 05 nva | 83 nov | #books
━━━━━━━━━━
Neville Park
boosted
The #HumbleBookBundle has a #MarthaWells edition with 14 of her books, including all the #MurderBotDiaries including two of the short stories 🎉🥳🎉🥳
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books
maco
boosted
A bunch of Martha Wells (Murderbot) ebooks are in a recent Humble Bundle. All the released Murderbot series and these five other books as well.
* Witch King
* The Book of Ile-Rien
* The Emilie Adventures
* City of Bones
* Wheel of the Infinite
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books
Just read Missing Helen by Tia Tashiro in Clarke world Magazine. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/tashiro_07_25/
Great short story about a woman whose ex-husband gets engaged to her clone! Excellent use of an unusual semi-second person viewpoint.
#reading#scienceFiction
der.hans
and 1 other
boosted
Humble Bundle running a @marthawells bundle including Murderbot?!?!
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books
Humble Bundle running a @marthawells bundle including Murderbot?!?!
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books
The #HumbleBookBundle has a #MarthaWells edition with 14 of her books, including all the #MurderBotDiaries including two of the short stories 🎉🥳🎉🥳
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books
A bunch of Martha Wells (Murderbot) ebooks are in a recent Humble Bundle. All the released Murderbot series and these five other books as well.
* Witch King
* The Book of Ile-Rien
* The Emilie Adventures
* City of Bones
* Wheel of the Infinite
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books
https://bookwyrm.social/user/btuftin/generatednote/8274546
btuftin@bookwyrm.social On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) - I finished this book and ... I can hardly say anything about it that wouldn't be a spoiler. It's a long slow trip despite being less than 200 pages. I'll eventually read the next volume, but there's seven or eight of them and if there isn't a shift of some kind early in book two I'm going to decide this just isn't for me. #books #reading
btuftin@bookwyrm.social On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) - I finished this book and ... I can hardly say anything about it that wouldn't be a spoiler. It's a long slow trip despite being less than 200 pages. I'll eventually read the next volume, but there's seven or eight of them and if there isn't a shift of some kind early in book two I'm going to decide this just isn't for me. #books #reading
alcinnz
boosted
I'm new here, so figured it's time for an introduction. 
I'm a 40-something yr old woman, working in tech and with a long list of hobbies and interests. Looking to make friends and I prefer to use Mastodon for the things I love.
Speaking of, here are a few, in the hashtags:
#knitting #crochet#SlowFashion #music #cats #snails #sheep#WomenInTech #minnesota#UK #reading #nature #cozy#Everquest2#SciFi#HorrorMovies
#Films #CultClassics#Introduction#NewHere
I'm new here, so figured it's time for an introduction.
I'm a 40-something yr old woman, working in tech and with a long list of hobbies and interests. Looking to make friends and I prefer to use Mastodon for the things I love.
Speaking of, here are a few, in the hashtags:
#knitting #crochet#SlowFashion #music #cats #snails #sheep#WomenInTech #minnesota#UK #reading #nature #cozy#Everquest2#SciFi#HorrorMovies
#Films #CultClassics#Introduction#NewHere